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dhar ma TALK The Path of the Bodhisattva DDharma teacher Larry Ward, True Great Sound, was given the lamp transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh in 2001. Larry offered this teaching on October 4, 2003, when sixty people gathered at a rustic camp outside of Medford, Oregon for a weekend. Titled, The Path of the Bodhisattva, the weekend’s practice focused on developing compassion. Here, Larry teaches the six paramitas as a way to live our lives deeply and meaningfully. photo by Emily Whittle Larry’s wife, Dharma teacher Peggy Rowe, True Original Source, offered practice in writing and creativity, in addition to a Dharma talk. An excerpt from her talk includes the story printed here, of walking in the Korean subway shortly after a suicide bomber had killed 200 people. 20 Summer 2004 Peggy, Thay, and Larry in China
dhar ma TALK Be a Real Human Being photo by Jill Robinson by Larry Ward I love the smells here. They’re old, been around a long time. I can feel the ancient presence of the native peoples, in the rocks and in the mountains, in the trees and in the river. It makes me very happy to be here in this space. Compassion is very concrete practice. Compassion can make a huge difference in how we live our daily lives, how we make our daily decisions. And our practice is to feed ourselves those things that nourish our compassion. That’s what a bodhisattva does. The bodhisattvas feed themselves the spiritual food, the emotional food, the physical food that nourishes and cultivates their mind of love. That’s the second characteristic of a bodhisattva. The wisdom of nondiscrimination is one, and cultivating the mind of love is the other. At retreats this past summer I heard Thay say something that I’ve never heard him say before. He said, “Be a real human being.” it became really clear to me that Timothy McVeigh never had a chance to be a real human being. How do I know Timothy McVeigh wasn’t a real human being Because a real human being does not perpetrate violence. That’s not the act of a real human being. Violence is a dark cloud floating across the blue sky of a real human being. A real human being is not trapped in or addicted to conflict and jealousy. Yes, we all have seeds of conflict and jealousy in us, but our seeds of conflict and jealousy are a dot against the blue sky of a real human being We all have the capacity to be greedy, to want too much, to give too little—to ourselves as well as others—but that is not the motivation of a real human being. That’s a shadow passing across the ground of a real human being A real human being is like this camp—this camp is our host. The earth is here, supporting us and holding us; the trees are here, the At this very moment bodhisattvas are rising up from photo by Tamara Buchanan So I’ve been meditating on that. When Peggy and I led a retreat in Oklahoma City recently, we were doing walking meditation at the Murrah building site where the bombing happened several years ago. It only took a minute for that devastation to happen. At the east gate, “9:01 a.m.” is carved in stone, and at the west gate, “9:03 a.m.” Between them are 161 empty chairs, for the people who were killed at 9:02. The first row is made of smaller chairs for children, because there was a daycare center there. And as we walked around that memorial, the earth. creek is running. Just holding us, whether we’re short or whether we’re tall, whether we’re young or whether we’re old, whether we’re black or whether we’re white, whether we’re straight or whether we’re gay, whether we’re this or whether we’re that. A real human being is a host, welcoming everything. In the morning when the sunlight strikes the sky for the first time, you can look in it and see dust in the sunlight. A real human being is the sunlight, not the dust. the Mindfulness Bell 21
Page 1: Summer 2004 A Journal of the Art of
Page 4 and 5: ISSUE NO. 36 - SUMMER 2004 Contents
Page 6 and 7: dhar ma TALK photo by Suzanne Ander
Page 8 and 9: dhar ma TALK most—a set of ideas,
Page 10 and 11: dhar ma TALK was not kind to you an
Page 12 and 13: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Fruit
Page 14 and 15: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Deer
Page 16 and 17: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT The O
Page 18 and 19: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Mindf
Page 20 and 21: fr uits of the WINTER RETREAT Dixon
Page 24 and 25: dhar ma TALK Our practice is to wat
Page 26 and 27: dhar ma TALK Mindfulness trainings,
Page 28 and 29: dhar ma TALK Bodhisattvas in the Su
Page 30 and 31: going to war. We had just finished
Page 32 and 33: anger, and violence in you. The way
Page 34 and 35: young people’s PRACTICE Welcoming
Page 36 and 37: young people’s PRACTICE Teens, Yo
Page 38 and 39: lue SKY Cultivating Our Blue Sky Na
Page 40 and 41: lue SKY the moment. For some, tears
Page 42 and 43: sangha PRACTICE The Sound of the Be
Page 44 and 45: sangha PRACTICE Mentoring Reflectio
Page 46 and 47: sangha PRACTICE Our Father’s Day
Page 48 and 49: • We need skilled and unskilled l
Page 50 and 51: mindfulness BELL 48 Summer 2004

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